Volunteer

Spent 4 hours of my day today entering data into batches for Red Cross for victims of Hurricane Rita. Austin is a service center location for people to come and sign up for financial assistance from Red Cross. This type of assistance is the Red Cross debit card that can be used at grocery stores or to withdraw cash at ATMs. The assistance is based upon verification of residence, and if the zip code is considered a "disaster area." If it isn't, the Houston service Disaster Response center is contact and they send someone to the residence to determine varying levels of damage.

I worked with a group of young volunteers who were with Americorps. An interesting community service group that is similar to Peace Corps, however it is USA based only. Surprisingly, the service center was quite slow today. They were sending volunteers home. I stayed on and entered info onto a spreadsheet that was sent by batches to a center that activated the cards. Then I worked on verification of activation, as well as resolving some that had errors, usually incorrect account coded into the batch spreadsheet.

I was glad I helped, even though I wished I could have done more. Hopefully I will get called in the future for more data entry needs. I type 90 words a minute if you can believe it.